Directory Category: Sports

SPIRE Institute and Academy, at 5201 SPIRE Circle in Geneva, is the largest thing of its kind in Ashtabula County and one of the largest indoor athletic complexes in the United States. It opened in 2009 as a designated Olympic and Paralympic training site, and the scale is genuinely hard to picture until you see it — the campus now covers more than 800 acres with over 850,000 square feet of indoor training space. Prior owners invested more than $100 million in the property, and in 2019 the complex was acquired by Axxella, a Baltimore-based investment firm, which set out to expand its academy programs, camps, leagues and event hosting. For a rural county better known for vineyards and lake tourism, having a world-class training facility in its backyard is an unlikely and significant asset.

The facilities themselves explain why elite athletes come here. The indoor space can be configured for as many as six basketball courts or twelve volleyball courts, and includes two full-size indoor soccer fields plus an outdoor stadium field and an Olympic-sized pool. SPIRE is unusual in track and field for having both indoor and outdoor arenas, which lets athletes train and compete year-round regardless of Northeast Ohio weather. On-campus amenities now include sports medicine, a dining hall, the SPIRE Village student residences, a Marriott and a Wyndham hotel, and even a Starbucks. The pool serves as the home facility for eight area high schools and is used by the Lake Erie Silver Dolphins, so the complex functions as community infrastructure as well as a national destination.

The roster of athletes who have trained or competed at SPIRE is the part that gets people’s attention. LaMelo Ball — now an NBA All-Star — joined SPIRE Institute and Academy in November 2018 to continue his high school basketball career, and his arrival put the academy in national headlines. Olympic gold medalist swimmer Caeleb Dressel is among the brand ambassadors associated with the campus. SPIRE also hosts a FINA scholarship training center, where swimmers from countries without comparable facilities come to live and train, and it has drawn major championship events — the 2023 USA Wrestling U23 Nationals and U20 World Team Trials, and the 2023 USA Track & Field National Youth Outdoor Championships, among others. The site has routinely served as a training facility for Olympic athletes.

The biggest national spotlight yet came this past summer. SPIRE hosted the inaugural Patriot Games from August 9 to 11, 2026 — a new high school athletic competition announced by President Donald Trump in December 2025, organized by Freedom 250, featuring one male and one female competitor aged 14 to 17 from every U.S. state, territory and tribal nation. Trump attended the games in person at SPIRE on August 11, as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. The competition was broadcast in a national primetime special on ESPN and ABC on August 13. Whatever your politics, a sitting president landing in Geneva, Ohio, for a nationally televised event is not something that happens here twice.

For local businesses, SPIRE’s value is measured in visitors. Tournaments, camps and championship weekends fill hotel rooms, restaurants, gas stations and shops across Geneva, Geneva-on-the-Lake, Austinburg and Ashtabula, often during shoulder seasons when the lake crowds have gone home. SPIRE Academy reports having injected $57.5 million into the local economy, increasing household and business earnings by $18.5 million and sustaining more than 700 jobs — a self-reported figure, but one that squares with what any business owner along Route 534 will tell you about a big tournament weekend. For the wineries, inns and restaurants of the Grand River Valley, SPIRE delivers exactly the kind of visitor the region spends real money trying to attract.